MacBook Pro (Mid 2010) hard freezes a few seconds after boot

[King Mustard]

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010, A1286, MC371LL/A, MacBookPro6,2)
Intel Core i5-520M 2.4 GHz Dual-Core
2x 2 GB DDR3-1066 (PC3-8500)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB
SSD

I get hard freezes within seconds of booting (sometimes I need to hold the power button down to turn it off, sometimes it auto-reboots).

Safe Mode works for as long as I want.

I have applied MBPMid2010_GPUFix v0.6.1, to no avail.

I ran two test sequences in memtest86 ('memtest all 2') and everything came back clear.

Any ideas?

 

[rm5]

Maybe try reinstalling macOS via Internet Recovery (or with a USB drive)? Also, maybe the hard drive is failing. Did you replace it with an SSD?

 

[King Mustard]

Maybe try reinstalling macOS via Internet Recovery (or with a USB drive)? Also, maybe the hard drive is failing. Did you replace it with an SSD?

I got this laptop to fix a few days ago. It had the issue, and the OS was installed on the HDD it was purchased from Apple with (320 GB).

I bought a new SSD and installed a fresh macOS installation on it but exact same issue, which leads me to believe it's a hardware issue.

Seeing as the drive has been swapped out, and seeing as I've tested the RAM (I've even replaced it), I am at a bit of a loss.

 

[Bigwaff]

Safe Mode. System Preferences > Network and select your active adapter. Disable IPv6.

 

[King Mustard]

Safe Mode. System Preferences > Network and select your active adapter. Disable IPv6.

Changed IPv6 to Off.

Did not help, unfortunately.

Based on your suggestion, I even turned off Wi-Fi completely, but to no avail.

 

[Bigwaff]

Safe Mode working than means it’s software problem. Boot in verbose mode. Maybe the displayed log entries will tell you what is causing a kernel panic.

 

[King Mustard]

Safe Mode working than means it’s software problem. Boot in verbose mode. Maybe the displayed log entries will tell you what is causing a kernel panic.

The verbose text stops appearing once the login screen appears, but it's at the login screen (or shortly after logging in) that the laptop hard freezes.

 

[Bigwaff]

Don’t know much about these old machines. Perhaps Safe Mode uses the integrated graphics and doesn’t load the kernel extensions for the Nvidia GPU, which would imply GPU failure of some kind during normal boot. In Safe Mode, can you create another user account and then log into that account during normal boot? Are you able to make a bootable external drive and use it?

 

[King Mustard]

Don’t know much about these old machines. Perhaps Safe Mode uses the integrated graphics and doesn’t load the kernel extensions for the Nvidia GPU, which would imply GPU failure of some kind during normal boot. In Safe Mode, can you create another user account and then log into that account during normal boot? Are you able to make a bootable external drive and use it?

Tried both, hard freezes happen still.

Tempted just to sell it for parts 😔

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't own a 2010 MBP 15".

But I've read here on macrumors about some kind of GPU/motherboard problem with them... may have something to do with capacitors... again, not sure.

But I think that's where your "researching" for a solution may lie.